Step 9 and the Related Disorders That Disappeared – Chuck C.

Thank you. I'm Chuck C., and I'm an alcoholic. All right. Before I get going, I want to do something that Clancy won't like. I want my wife of 53 years and clench his wife off and on for about half that time to stand up. Stand up! Now I want to share a few personal thoughts with you. When I was shaving tonight, getting ready to come down here, here, I was looking past, first looking at classes past, because it's more recent than mind. And I was remembering a few years before, 20 years ago, when I wouldn't have given you a plugged nickel for Clancy and all of his chances for the future and the past. He was the saddest sack that I have ever seen, I think. He didn't have any teeth. teeth. He was ugly as hell. He didn't have any money. Living in the back end of a wrecked car in the 6300 club parking lot. And he was arrogant as hell. And there wasn't any way that he could make this program. No way at all. And I wouldn't have given a blood nickel for it. And then I looked at me 33 years ago and I wouldn't have given a plug penny for me. I was better looking than he was. But when that's said, it's all said. And there's no way that he could be having a twentieth birthday tonight, and no way that I could be a thirty-third by the middle of January if I don't drink or pill or pot or acid. Between now and then. This lad had 140 babies here for dinner tonight. A hundred 140. Hell, I could take a shotgun and I couldn't get together 140. I've been here almost twice as long as he has. And I was looking at the mileage just casually. And in these last 32 years I have driven my car over a million miles in AA, just AA. And the miles that I've flown I have no idea, no idea. And so that's something. And I suspect that Clancy might top that by the time he's thirty-three, really. I suspect between the two of us we've talked to us maybe two and a half million people, really, maybe more than that, I don't know. And now isn't that something? For a couple of guys that came out from under a rock, like he did and I did, into a life like this, there's only one thing I can say to you. I'm so grateful I'm so grateful I can't see. I take credit for the first 43 years of my life, because during that time I was the master of ceremonies and star of the show. And to drive old age of 43 as a failure is a husband, a father, a businessman, a man and a drunk. And that's all the departments I had. If I'd had any more departments, I'd have failed in them too, but that was all. Now maybe you don't think that you can be a failure as a drunk, but I was, because I got to the point where I couldn't buy liquor liquor with money. And I think when that happens, you're a failure as a drunk. And I'll just tell you a little about that. My favorite supplier was a guy by the name of Vic, and he had a liquor store just west of Beverly Drive. I lived in Beverly Hills through through old school, all my bad drinking, and the first 11 years of my sobriety. And Beck was just west of Beverly Drive on Pico. And during the years, I had paid off his mortgage, each, put his kids through school, giving him a pretty good bank account, besides helping him open up every morning. And the last time I was there to help him open up, he finally got there. You know, the last 20 minutes before he got there of a morning to open that store was longer than my whole 32 years and six months in in Alcoholics Anonymous. God, it was a long time. And he finally got there that morning and I helped him get in, get the door open, walked in right behind him. He walked around behind the counter and instead of reaching for my bottle, he crossed his arms like that And he looked at me and he says, Chuck, I have witnessed your demise as long as I'm going to. I'll never sell you another bottle of whiskey as long As you live. And I'm telling you now to get the hell out of my store and stay out because I'm not going to watch you die. I left there thinking he was the most ungrateful son of a bitch I'd ever seen. After all I'd done for him. He won't sell me liquor and I've got the money in my hand. But that was one of the things that helped me get here. It's pretty tough to take because I'd known him for years, you know. So, I take credit for the first forty-three years of my life. I take absolutely no credit for last thirty-two years and a half, no credit at all. The first weekend of this year I dropped in Torrance. There's a little lady over there that has a birthday that I've been talking at for years, and I was there. And the first... they had a speaker before me, and he was a Scotsman, and he had a patch over his eye. And he got up and he made an awfully good talk, short talk. off. But during this talk, he said not less than a half-dozen times, I'm sober today by choice. I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous by choice. Half a dozen times he said that. And when I got up, I said, I am sure glad that Scotty is a member of this society by choice, because I'm not. As long as I had the power of choice my choice was never to come here, and I never came until I ran out of everything including the power of choice. So I can take absolutely no credit for anything that's happened in the last thirty-two years and a half. And as I told you, my gratitude grows with the days. And my gratitude starts with people like you, drunks who are not drunk, because you were the people that took me in and rocked me to sleep thirty-two years ago. So my gratitude starts with you. Then to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, because that's the way it came to me, and then to my very own God. Because that's the way it happened. And to you, and to the program, and to my own God, I'm so grateful against these. because my life for 32 years now or for such time as I can remember of the 32 years because I wasn't well when I came my life has been fabulous I could empty the Coliseum in 15 minutes by just starting to talk about what's happened to me me in thirty-two years. And they'd say, there's no use to listen to this idiot, you know? They'd get up and go home. But that's the way it has been. And I want to tell you how it happened. Many of you have heard this, but my last drunk to date started the Friday before Christmas in 1945. My boss man called me in, and I knew it was curtains because I had it coming, but he didn't can me. He started talking, which was a good sign. And he said to me, Charlie, I was Charlie in business, he says, you've had a lot of trouble this year. He was a non-alcoholic, and he says, I think that I know what causes it. I think it's because of the pressures you're under. Now, he says here, I'm going to take a little of the pressure off of you, and maybe next year you won't have so much pressure and you won't have so much trouble. And instead of shooting me, as he had every right to do, he gave me three thousand dollars for a Christmas present. The Friday before Christmas, 1945, to take the pressure off of me. Now if you don't think he took the pressure of me, you're nuts! There's one thing that's worse for an alcoholic than bad fortune, and that's good fortune. So I got drunk on the way home, which is not like it should have been because I was a periodic for the last ten years. And periodics don't get drunk on the way home. Periodics never taper off. They taper on. And it usually took me from 30 to 60 days to get off my feet after a dry spell from the time I started nibbling until I got down. I always made it, But it wasn't that quickly. But my last one, I remember nothing from the time I left the office on a Friday before Christmas till after the middle of January 1946. And I came to sometime after the mid-July 1946 with the clearest head I've ever known in my life, which is another thing that's impossible, because I never ate when I drank. And I had nothing in my skin but whiskey, and yet I came to with the clearest head I've ever known. And I saw me for the first time in my life with nothing between me and me. sometime between the Friday before Christmas in the middle of January everything between me and me had burned out all the excuses were gone including Mrs. C's mother now there was a king-sized reason for getting drunk that old bitty had only one daughter her. And I was married to her, and she was living with us. And she had a grandstand seat watching me crucify her only daughter. She didn't like me very good, and I didn't like her that good, because if she hadn't been living with me, I wouldn't have had to crucify her daughter. So it was all her fault. We had a mutual hating society that was a beautiful thing to behold, I'll tell you. She lasted five years at least after all the rest of my excuses were gone. But this morning she was even gone and there were were no excuses left. And I saw me as I was. Now, lest I forget to do this, I'll tell you what happened to her. She lived with us five years after I sobered up. And it is absolutely astounding what this program did for her. In the last year that she lived, if she had to come in and found me slapping that wife of mine all over the house, she would have looked at her and she'd say, Why, Elsa, what have you done? Because by then I couldn't do any wrong at all. And the wonder of wonders is that she wouldn't believe that anybody or anything had helped me at all, not even God. She knew that I had done it. Now, mind you, she hated me worse than poison. And by this time, she was certain that I had done all of this by myself. And she'd come up and put her arms around me, and she'd say, Oh, son, I always knew you had it in you. I'd start blushing at my shoe tops and right out the top of my head. it. But she wouldn't even believe that God helped me, you know? I'd done it by myself. So the excuses were all gone, including her. And I knew that I had lost the battle of life. Now, that's the first time in my life, in forty-three years, that I had ever admitted defeat one time. Now don't think that I won all my battles, I didn't. I got the hell kicked out of me on many occasions, but it was by accident. He hit me first, and I'd get him next time. and sometimes I did and sometimes I got God again too but nobody had ever made me admit defeat but that morning I knew I'd lost the battle of life I didn't know why because I knew nothing about alcoholism the biggest majority of you people in this room tonight can't remember when there wasn't an Alcoholics Anonymous but I ran out of time before Alcoholics Anonymous was born. Alcoholics Anonymous is 43 years old, the tenth day of last June, and I had already run out of time before it was born! I tried for another ten years to prove I hadn't, but at the end of that ten years I'd proven that I had. So, I knew nothing of alcoholism, but I knew I'd lost the battle of life, and I accepted it. I knew why Mrs. C was divorcing me after twenty 20 years. I might say to you, without cause, I'd given her 20 of the best years of my life. And she's divorcing me. And I knew why. And I knew she should have done it 10 years before. And I knew our children wouldn't come home when I was around. And And I knew why that same boss man that had given me the three had sent word to the house that if I ever stepped foot in the plant again, he was going to throw me through the window. And the window which he had picked out don't open. I accepted the fact that morning that everything dear to me in life is gone and should be gone and that I was not entitled to have it back. And I'm going to say that again, because this is what my life has been built on for the last thirty-two years. I totally and completely accepted the fact that morning that everything dear to me in life was gone and should be gone, and that I was not entitled to have it back. I also accepted death, because on the next to the last trip out, I'd come as close to dying as you can. And this was worse. I had gone to the kitchen in my withdrawal period to get a glass of buttermilk. Mrs. C and Richard were sitting in the living room they heard me let out a beller and heard me hit the floor and they came running out thinking that they would find me in an alcoholic convulsion which was my want but I'd already used up all my convulsions I wasn't convulsing at all I was lying there on the kitchen floor as peaceful as anybody you ever saw I wasn' t doing nothing They tell me I was a peculiar color. I was blue. And they couldn't wake me up, so they got all exercised and called the oxygen squad at the Beverly Hills Receiving Hospital. Told them to send down a squad and see what they could do with me. And as serious as this is, it's one of the funniest things that I can think of. because that woman and those kids had been praying for me to die for at least five years. And they came to the kitchen and found me dead and called the oxygen squad. Isn't that something? Now, to show you that isn't a figment of my imagination. You know, she's sitting right over there. She belongs to another society. I think they call it and she does a lot of talking on her own as a matter of fact she goes all over the country yakking and leaves me home to cook my own breakfast that's right sure thank you and she'll get up here you're talking to this many people that she can find them. And you know what she tells me? She said, I found myself on many occasions trying to figure out how to do away with this son of a bitch and not get caught. Now, she was talking about killing me, which I don't think is very nice. And when she found me dead, she called the oxygen squad, and I have reason to believe they brought me two. I remember what happened after I came to. There was a a young doctor with him. And he told me, says he to me, he says, to all intents and purposes you were dead. We've had a hell of a time bringing you to. It's our opinion that nobody will ever bring you to again under these circumstances. And then he gave me the finest piece of counsel I'll ever hear in my life, regardless of how long I live. He looked me right in the eye And he said, if I were you, I wouldn't do that anymore. But I did it again. And the last time was worse than the next of the last times. So I knew I was going to die, and it was all right. But I didn't want to die with a record. I didn'T want to Die With A Record. And I remembered in the bottom of this snake pit that Mrs. C had found and read Jack Alexander's article in the Saturday Evening Post four and a half years before this. She had thought it might be of some value to me, and had put it open at the right page on the left arm of the chair I sit in right now. now. And when I came in, I read it and I remembered it on this morning. I only remember two things about it because I was drunk when I read but I remembered that drunks help drunks and didn't drink, and they called it Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said to myself, if I ever live to get out of this bed, I will find AA. And instantly the curtain dropped. My sanity was gone. And I was sickened to death, drunk and insane. And I had a lot of dying to do. But from the second of commitment until right now, I have never had a sedating or tranquilizing pill or a drink of alcoholic beverage of any kind. Such is the great significance of this thing called surrender! Surrender! Surrender is victory for the alcoholic, and the greatest single event that's ever happened in my entire life was when the bottle surrendered me sometime between the Friday before Christmas Christmas, and the end of January 1946. And I got to this program surrendered. I did not know it. Now just for the fun of it, I'll tell you a few things that have happened since, because these monkeys used all my time. Why do they have six or eight speakers before That's where I get it. You notice what they did? Nobody in this country would have talked against me tonight. So they got one from Memphis, Tennessee and one from Oklahoma. Imported them just to cut down my time. I didn't know where to find you folks. My keen alcoholic mind told me that you would not be in the phone book. You were anonymous, weren't you? They don't anonymous in the telephone book. So knowing you wouldn't be there, I never looked. which is the story of my life. I knew so damn much that wasn't true, I couldn't learn anything that was. So I had to call people and ask them if they knew anybody that knew anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it took a little while to find you. So I went to the office before I'd ever been into an AA meeting. The boss saw my old car in the parking lot, knew I was on the premises and knew I wasn't going to stay and he came hunting for me and he busted into my office like a bull in a china closet and I couldn't have defended myself with a shotgun because I wasn' t well I didn' t have the shanks I had the leeks and all I could do was sit there at the desk and say Victor leave me alone I don't work for you anymore. I'm down here to clean up this desk. I'm here to do the things you paid me for last year that it didn't do. And as soon as I get even with you, I'll get the hell out of here on my own power. And you'll never owe me a penny as long as you live, and you don't have to throw me out. But for God's sake, leave me alone. I have to get even. And he stopped in his tracks. And he said, what the hell's happened to you, Charlie? And I said, don't know. And I didn't. But he knew something had happened. And he didn't throw me through the window. I talked to one other person prior to that time, and that was Miss C. I told you she was devoting me, so what I'm about to tell you was no magnanimous move on my part. It was something I had to say to her. I called her in, and I said, Honey, it's no longer of any consequence to me whether or not I live under this roof. It is of absolutely no importance to me at all. I'll never ask a thing of you as long as the two of us live, but one, if I ever have anything anything that will add to your life, let me give it to you." And we closed the book and it's never been reopened. Now if she were talking tonight, she would say that she knew the first time that I talked with her that something had happened, but I didn't. two and a half years or three years or something after that I might be talking to the man at lunch about business and he stopped me in the middle of his sentence and he said Charlie what the hell has happened to you I've been knowing you for 25 years and I don't know you what's happened and I'd say I don' t know because I didn' t I didn't know anything had happened, but I started the day that I met you people in my first meeting. And I went there by myself alone. I don't have time to tell you why that came about, but it did. and I liked what I felt in the room I liked what I saw I saw your eyes and there was something and I came back every night for six months I was in a meeting every night knowing that I couldn't have this thing because I didn't have enough enough physically or mentally to get it, and I knew it. But after six months of a meeting every night, I had my first great discovery, and that was that I hadn't had a drink or pill for six months. Now, that was a tremendous discovery for me because there it was. And I was so pleased about that that I got lost in trying to give this thing back. To the drunk who still suffered. And I was very busy with that. And another six months went by, or thereabouts. And I discovered I had a family. And that was a great discovery. And I'll just tell you one little thing about that. I had me a girl in those first months from Beverly Hills. She was about 20, 25 years my senior. And she had a little bitty thing. She walked like she was walking on eggs. She was from up in the big numbers. And she had big numbers, she was very wealthy. I lived between Wilshire and Olympic, down on the flatlands where the poor people lived. But she lived up yonder. And she was quite a gal. She dressed to the teeth for every A meeting that I ever took her to which was many and she always wore a hat you never saw that in AA most of it but she always the wore a hat very very proper and sometime between the first six months first year she called my house thinking to get me and she got Mrs. C on the phone And she says Who the hell are you? Miss C says Well, I'm Chuck's wife Didn't know he had a wife And Miss C said Well, he doesn't either And I didn't But I discovered I had a life and kids And they were living like kittens And that wasn't bad And another year, oh maybe six months, went by and I discovered I was still trying to clean up my desk. And business was good. Business was good! And now another year has gone by and I discovered that my state of being, my whole life, was better than anything I'd ever dreamed of. And, of course, that was quite a discovery. And now either five or six years have gone by, and I can't place this, but it was either five or 6 years, and then I discovered I was never alone anymore. I who had walked alone all my life, and discovered that I was not alone anymore, I had a God of my very own, and wherever I am he is. Now that's the great discovery. That's the great discovery! We make this discovery and the search is over, and life begins. Now, my opinion of this program of ours is that it's nothing in the world but uncovering, discovering and discarding. Uncovering, discovering and distorting, and all of it, as far as I am able to see, is every bit of it is an inside job. It is my opinion that there's no one in this room tonight that needs anything added to their lives. All they need is to uncover and discover what's already there. Because having lived with people like you for over 32 years, I am convinced from the top of my longest hair to my toenails that the first two words of the Lord's Prayer mean what they say, Our Father God. Now if that's true, you can let your imagination go absolutely crazy, and you can't get close to the truth of being itself. You can't even get close. Our Father God, I his kid. Now if I am his kid, you are. If one of us are or his child, all of us are. If one of us ain't, none of us is, and I am so you are. And it's not something added, it's something uncovered and discovered. And this is one one of the reasons that I am not in sympathy with so much of what you all are doing in the program right now, which is self-thinking. Self-thinking! I don't know how many pens those of you who are in this room tonight have worn out in the last six months running running home and writing. That's all I hear about you monkeys. You get some feeling somewhere or other, and you run home and write, write, and write. I don't think it's, well, according to me. That is all I know because I never did it. According to me that ain't it. Because self-thinking is insanity. Self-thinking is insanity Our problem is I want, I don't want I like, I do not like That is self-think That is what got us here My next project That is Polish for project project. We got a Polish pope now, you know. I'm going to use Polish as best I can from now on. But anyway, my next project is to go around and collect all the think-think-think signs in all the meeting halls and clubhouses in the United States and having a great bonfire. You know, for an alcoholic, thinking is disaster, particularly if you drink and think. You're done. You either want to think or drink, but don't mix them up. Thinking is what got us here, so quit thinking and start doing it. I was sure for 43 years of my life that as soon as I knew enough everything was going to be all right and when I knew everything there was to know there wasn't anything that I didn't know I couldn't even get out of bed and come and tell you what I knew and for a philosopher of my ability that is bad So now I'm pretty well convinced that you can live yourself into right thinking, but you cannot think yourself into the right living. So if we take the first nine steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous honestly for For sobriety only. Sobriety only, not for related disorders. I think that most of us are working on related disorders now writing about this and stuff like that. I had a few. The lady over there was divorcing me. Our kids wouldn't spit on me. me. The boss was going to throw me through the window. I had no home, no job, no health, no sanity, and no money, which I believed to be pretty good related disorders. I don't think you can find an assortment that's much better. And I never spent five seconds on any one of them. And they all disappeared, along with the obsession to drink. So I believe this, if we honestly apply the first nine steps to ourselves for sobriety only, at number nine when we finish it, we are surrendered. That's the purpose of the first first nine steps of this program, to squeeze us out of ourselves, to get rid of self-thinking, to get out of the human ego, if you will, and it squeezes it right out of us. If we get here not surrendered, we are surrendered if we do that, and then we can look deeper than ourselves and find us, which includes our relationship to each other and to God. And it's a fantastic discovery, and it's an inside job. You see, we have to find him where he is. And I believe that the great cosmic joke is that God hid himself in the last place we ever look, right here. The last place wherever we look. So we uncover it and discover it where it is. and that's right here now along with this discovery comes a feeling of dignity of value of worth that is unspeakably wonderful and it has absolutely nothing to do with human ego but it has everything to do you with gratitude, gratitude, so grateful you can't see, because you discover the thing you've been looking for all your life. Now I haven't much time, I haven' any, but again it's not my fault. So I want to take just a couple of minutes To see if anybody else thinks like I do That is in the past, the teachers and what not The past I have the feeling that the carpenter man Saw things pretty much the way I think I see them Because he said said, I and my Father are one. Not two, one. A little later on he said, I am in the Father and he in me and I in you. And that's pretty close, isn't it? It's pretty close. And a little later on he said, the kingdom of heaven is within you. Hear me? That's what we're talking about. There was a little old guy, he He didn't amount to much. He was just a monk. He was a pot and pan washer in a monastery just outside Paris. He lived in 1666, and we were boys together. He didn' t pay any attention to them. He just went ahead washing pots and pans and talking to God. He said he'd never knew when his prayers of office started and stopped and his prayers began. And he became quite a successful counselor for people in trouble. He was talking to one of these old boys one day, and he said to him, He is within you. Look not for him elsewhere. That's what we're talking about. And there was another guy. he was Dominican lived in Germany about the same time Brother Lawrence and he said it like this you have heard that nature abhors a vacuum I tell you that God abhores a vacuum can't abide a vacuum any place under heaven however small now says he all you got to do is get empty of self or as other words surrender and automatically you're full of God Now, that comes nearer explaining what happened to me in January 1946 than anything I've ever read. And now I'm going to step up. I'm gonna talk a little without a seat. If you're Irish, his name was St. Augustine. If you were like me, it was St Augustine . Now, St. Augustine was a bad boy. He reminded me a great deal of me, because he had a very strong weakness for strong drink, and he had very strong weaknesses for women. And I identify a little with him. his mama was praying for him for 40 years and he'd go by her and say mama keep it up some of these days it might take and they did so help me and there's a devotee of his in this room tonight that told me that St. Augustine for 1,000 of the 2,000 years since the birth of Jesus was the authority in a Catholic church on Christianity. You know? So that's quite a quite an up jump. It's like Clancy it. They're now called synonymous. Really. So, he was talking to God after things got good. He was talking with God. And this is what he said. He said, Too late have I loved thee, O thou beauty of ancient days that ever knew. Too late habe I loved thee, and behold, Oh, thou wert within, and I abroad. That's what I'm talking about. And there I searched for thee, deformed eye, plunging amidst the fair forms which thou hast made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with thee. That's terrific. God, that just blows my mind because that was my life for 43 years. And this, with this I close. In my last days of drinking I had a son that was as big as I was and he wasn't drunk. And so he was the bird dog to keep me in hand. And when I got home and put that car of mine in the garage, I was never allowed to take it out until I'd sobered up. And on occasion, I would run out of medicine after the stores had closed. And I can't have my car. And what am I going to do? too. So I commandeer one of the boys' bicycles. And I ride all over Beverly Hills trying to talk somebody out of a bottle after hours. And quite often I did. Now, here's the thing want to say to you. I've got a big window with a beautiful view, and I like to look out that window and see lots of things. And sometimes I can't see out the window because faces are all over me. It's blocked by your faces, and I sit there and bawl to myself. Nobody around but me. And sometimes I'm sitting there and I see me on that bicycle hunting, hunting, you know, traveling all over Beverly Hills, hunting for something. And I see God riding right with me. And he's saying to himself, look at this silly son of a bitch hunting all over the world. All over Beverly Hill for me when I'm riding with him all the time. God bless you. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Sobercast is ad-free, and we'd like your help in order to keep it that way. So if you'd like to help us be self-supporting by pledging a dollar or two a month, visit SoberCast.com and look for the donate links. Thank you very much.